Posts by seattleniceguy

33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

Terry,

You're putting words in my mouth. I'm not saying that the opposite of life is non-life, or any such thing. In fact, I haven't been talking about the likelihood of life for several posts now.

Let's start this again. Any planet has various properties, such as distance from sun, amount of surface water, amount and number of organic chemicals, etc. These properties are scales that can have values that range quite a bit.

Let's zoon in on one of these properties: distance from star. Any planet, by virtue of being a planet, will be some distance from a star. It could be close, like Mercury, or it could be far, like Pluto.

If we find 10 planets in a star system, they will be in 10 different orbits. Let's say that the scale of possible distances looks something like this:

STAR |------| HAPPY |-------------------------------------------------------|

Planets are distributed along this continuum. There is a happy range in which any planet that finds itself can check off that particular requirement to be conducive to life.

From a probability point of view, fulfilling this requirement is not really that hard. If a given planet has, say, a 1 in 1000 chance of being in an orbit that provides it with stable heat (I think this is generous - imagine putting 1000 planets in our solar system), then given a million trials, the chances are exceedingly good that some of them will have earthlike orbits.

This would be the case unless you feel that some kind of devious force is actively blocking planets from having earthlike orbits. But given a natural distribution, we can expect planets to exist with earthlike orbits.

What think you, Terry? Does this sound reasonable?

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33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

Gosh, Terry, you're really making this difficult!

Let me rephrase the question. We have identified one requirement for life as we know it as a planet with a stable source of heat. One way of obtaining this is by having a planet that, by virtue of its distance from its star, has a stable surface temperature within a range of, say 0 - 100 degrees Celcius. For any star, this is a range of distances that will satisfy this requirment.

Given enough trials, then, are you in agreement that there will be planets that satisfy this requirement?

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33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

Sorry to deluge you, but there's one more thing that I think we may be getting hung up on. The trials do not need to be distributed through time in order for probability to work as I have described. Let's consider the 36 6-side die throws that I described above. You could throw them sequentially, or you could put them in a shoe box and throw them all at once. It doesn't matter.

It is true that the universe shot debris out from a source only one time (at least in our iteration). Think of this as a gigantic Yahtzee throw, scattering billions of planets around. Each planet is a trial.

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33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

If you flip a binary coin (only heads OR tails) a hundred times the result is not PREORDAINED by either "likely" "extremely likely" or "unlikley" results. What you get are THE ACTUAL RESULTS which may or may not conform to an expected pattern.

I re-read this paragraph several times, as you suggested.

I beg to differ with you. If you were to take a box full of 1000 coins and throw them all over the floor, it is indeed absurdly likely that at least one will be heads. You could safely bet your life on the outcome. Yes, it is possible to get 1000 tails. It will happen, on average, 1 time out of 10 ^ 300 times. To put that in perspective, you could try this once per second for the entire age of the universe and probably never have it happen.

Probability is a force you can count on. Casinos ain't making money by bucking the natural laws of the universe. They count on them to the tenth of a percent. Consider roulette, where the gambler has a 47% chance of winning on any spin. Over the long haul, the casino doesn't have to worry. They will make money. A stroll down the Strip in Las Vegas should convince you of the reliability of probability.

The problem with the "sure bet" you mention that leaves a gambler's pockets empty is that probability is reliable only when the number of trials is large enough with relation to the number of states, and when the gambler does his math right. :-)

As a general rule, when the number of trials is at least as large as the number of states squared (for number of states > about 5), your odds become blindingly good. So, for example, with a six-sided die, throw it 36 times, and I promise you, you will get the number you are looking for. Try it. Seriously.

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33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

Terry,

On the likelihood of a coin coming up heads on any given toss, yes, I realize that there is no force ordaining it to be a certain way, and that any so-called "pattern" up until the current toss has no bearing whatsoever on what the current toss will be.

The point is that in something like a coin toss, you get on average an even distribution of states, unless the environment is biased toward one of the states. It doesn't work this way with dice only. We could switch to a 20-sided die. You will get on average any particular number 1 out of 20 times, over a large enough sample of trials.

The place that you are misunderstanding me is that I am not relating this to life (at least not yet) - I am instead relating it to any given planet's likelihood of being conducive to life along multiple dimensions. For example, say we through a thousand plants into the universe like a gigantic Yahtzee roll. Some land too close to stars, some land too far. But since they will end up at distances that are evenly distributed through the possible states, then given a large enough number of trials (in relation to the number of states), some of the planets will end up at distances that are within the thresholds we consider conducive to life. We're looking at one dimension only here: distance from star.

It's as if you walked into a gymnasium and marked out a few small boxes on the floor that represented "good" states, and then you walked to the sidelines and started blasting sand all over the gym. Assuming that you distrubute sand fairly evenly, then with a high enough number of trials (grains of sand), at some point it becomes likely that some sand lands in the boxes. For example, when the gym floor is covered in an inch-thick layer of sand, there are many grains in each box.

Imagine you back a dump truck full of planets up and dump them all around a bunch of star systems. The planets are distributed at various distances. Given enough trials, some of them will be at "good" distances, unless you posit a force that biases them toward particular states.

Let's stop here for now, lest we get lost in details. Are you in agreement up to this point, that given a large enough number of planets orbiting stars at various distances, that some of them will be at the correct distance to be conducive to life (at least, as we know it)?

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P.S. Incidentally, I can't wait to use the probability discussion with the next Witness/Mormon that comes to my door. If they are silly enough to suggest that the probability of getting a heads does not go up as the number of trials does, I'll propose a simple experiment: We flip ten quarters. If none of them are heads, I'll study JWism/Mormonism. If at least one is heads, they will listen to what I have to say. (I bet the Mormons will go for this, since they are strong believers in God's guidance and testimony.)

The probability that at least one quarter out of 10 will be heads is [1 - (.5 ^ 10)] = 99.9%

One more thing, Terry: You keep talking about the coin being binary. I'm only using a coin because it is easier to understand. We could easily switch to a 20-sided die, or a billion sided die, and the principles work the same way.

15

On behalf of all lurkers...

by marked in

jw
friends

... i'd like to say a big thank you to all you regular posters.

i've been here as long or longer than many of you with hundreds of posts, but even though i don't often hit "reply" it doesn't mean i'm not responding.

and i think i speak for many of us here.

seattleniceguy

Hey, marked! Great to hear from you. It's posts like yours that invigorate me to keep it up! :-)

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33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

Well, for the purposes of this discussion, I mean life that is similar to life on earth. On earth, all life is united by metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction, development, inheritance. Those things would suffice for me, even if the exact mechanics (for instance, inheritance via DNA/RNA) were different.

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6

New single-molecule transistors work at room temperature

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

just when you thought the ipod was pretty cool, we may soon have devices using one-molecule-wide transistors.

researchers at the national institute for nanotechnology have demonstrated the ability to switch the charge on a single molecule to impede or allow current flow in surrounding molecules.

flipping the gate requires one electron, as opposed to the one million required in current technology.

seattleniceguy

Stilla,

The heat problem is one of the things that's solved by the fact that the gate is flipped by only one electron, rather than millions. Lower current flow = lower heat.

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33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

Back to the coin. The coin is binary.
Life and no life are not binary although they APPEAR to be.
The difference between no life and life is absolutely and mind-bogglingly vast.

The differences between a planet that will not sustain life and one that will are not as deep as the life-versus-non-life dichotomy. If we define a number of traits that a planet must have to be life-hospitable, then it is a certainty that some planets will fulfill them all.

For example, the WTS makes a big deal about how perfect our distance is to the sun. We'll ignore the fact that this distance is only "perfect" from our view because we have developed to be unfit for life elsewhere. Let's imagine that there really and truly is a limited range of host star sizes and distances from those stars that a planet must be to support life. Let's say a star must be between 80% and 120% of our star's size, and that the planet must be between 80% and 120% of our planet's distance to the sun, from that star.

Now, we can assume that planets are distributed fairly evenly in star systems. Look at our system. We have at least 10 (now) planets at various distances from the sun. Go to another star system, and you'll find a bunch of planets at different locations. Clearly, if we look at enough star systems, we should find another planet orbiting a star similar to ours at a distance similar to ours.

If we allow that there really are a billion billion planets, it is well-nigh impossible that no other planet would have the necessary ingredients for life. And this whole discussion doesn't even take into account the very real possibility that life can exist in forms other than what we know!

Again, Terry, unless you believe that God magically did it, then you believe that life arose because the environment was right for it. Do you believe that the environment was right only one place in the entire universe? Are the requirements for a life-hospitable environment that stringent?

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33

Fly 2.4 billion light years in 2 minutes

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

researchers at the max planck institute have wrapped up the largest supercomputer simulation ever to study the growth of galaxies and black holes.

using 25 terabytes of data, and crunching it for a month, they have produced, among other things, a computer animation that allows you to fly 2.4 billion light years through the universe in about two minutes.. the bright spots in the movies are galaxies.

seeing this movie makes it seem highly dubious that we are the only life in the universe.. the article contains links to three movies.

seattleniceguy

Pope, I believe they used DivX compression, which I believe (not sure) is a proprietary format used to compress DVDs. You usually get the codec when you install DVD software. Can you play DVDs on your computer?

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